COPS PROBE MILL BASIN BIAS ATTACK

The NYPD’s Bias Squad was called into action early last Sunday after a black man was severely beaten in Old Mill Basin by six to eight white men wielding baseball bats and pipes and shouting racial epithets.

Police from the 63rd Precinct were called at about 1:30 a.m. to the corner of East 59th Street and Avenue N to investigate an assault, according to a police spokesperson. When the patrol officers responded, they found Alex Moore, 29, of East New York in the back seat of a car owned by two people who “rescued” him from a crowd of white men surrounding him. Moore was taken to Brookdale Hospital by Emergency Medical Service parame-dics and was treated for a deep chest bruise, a laceration on his ankle and a hip contusion, police said. He was pronounced in stable condition and re-leased late Sunday, sources said.

Moore told police he was with a friend and waiting for a bus to take him home shortly after 1 a.m. when a group of white men in an SUV passed him on Avenue N, made a U-turn and pulled up to him, taunting him.

As they got out of the van, Moore and his friend ran. His friend got away, he said, but the gang of attackers grab-bed him and started to hit him with bats and metal pipes, throwing the victim to the ground and kicking him.

While he was being attacked, a man and woman in a passing car pulled over to see what was going on and yelled for the attackers to leave the victim alone, but they continued to beat him.

The man who yelled at them was told to mind his own business, but when he yelled again, the group of assailants ran, scattering in all directions, but man-aging to rob the victim of $50 as they fled. The couple who rescued Moore took him to their car and called police. The names of the good Samaritans were not revealed because they could be potential witnesses, police said.

The neighborhood where the beating took place is ethnically well diversified, with blacks, whites, and Asians living quietly side by side. Some sources said it’s a “completely quiet” area, but some young people, who did not want to reveal their names, said they had been getting scared lately to walk the streets after 10 p.m.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was attending a function in Queens when the attack took place, said he and other city officials made sure that the city’s hate crime investigators were dispatched to the crime scene area immediately.

“The good news is that bias incidents are down 50 percent in the last five years,” he said. “The bad news is that they still exist.”

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz visited Moore in the hospital, as did District Attorney Charles Hynes, who said Moore told him that as he was being beaten he was called “the N…..word.” Hynes said that if that was the case, it activates prerequisites to being called a bias crime, reports said.

State Senator Carl Kruger issued and distributed a flyer he called a “community alert” offering a $1,000 reward “for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible” and said a 24-hour tip line has been established to receive information: (718) 743-1089.

City Councilman Lew Fidler, whose office is located a mere few blocks from the scene of the incident, said, “We have a wonderful, integrated, peaceful and harmonious community here. We won’t stand for this kind of conduct in our mix or anything that will challenge the community feeling we all enjoy.”

One youth, who asked that his name be withheld, said he and his friends were “surprised” at the attack because the neighborhood “usually doesn’t have problems.”

A 73-year-old white resident of the area, Louis Savares, said, “I can’t figure what people will gain by resorting to such violence, but I guess it doesn’t take much to be brave when the odds are eight men against one man.”

Michael Misiano, 82, said he thought there was “a lot of it going on in the neighborhood.”

Although they also refused to give their names, shopkeepers in the immediate area of the building said they were “trying to forget about it” and preferred to go about their business.

Anyone with information should call Senator Kruger’s office, the 63rd Precinct at (718) 258-4411 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.